State Lines: Requiem for a moon child

J.T. Chapin

Published
5:30 am CST, Sunday, March 23, 2003

It was last May when I saw the two newspaper headlines: "Planned clinic cuts bring worry," and "City's mistakenly cutting away health safety net." Both items focused on Houston's budget problems and possible reduction of services at neighborhood health-care centers.

"They can't do that to her," I thought.

But she was already gone, a small girl, buried a lifetime ago somewhere in Houston. I don't know where.

She died on a day when three Americans returned from a near-death experience in space.

It was April 17, 1970.

I was on duty at the Harris County Emergency Corps, which at the time was an all-volunteer first aid and rescue organization at North Main and Pecore. The day had been quiet and my partner, Howard Hurst, and I were absorbed in the drama of Apollo 13. We watched on TV as three astronauts in a crippled spacecraft crawled toward Earth.

We cheered wildly when, shortly after noon, they splashed down safely. It was a stupendous moment, filled with incredible joy and immense relief. The world, including the Soviet Union, rejoiced with us.

Around 1 p.m., the "Blue Phone" hotline from our dispatcher service rang. Howard snatched up the receiver and answered, "Rescue, Hurst." His head bobbed intently as he scribbled an address on a call slip then slammed down the phone.

"Baby's stopped breathing," he said. I was half a step behind him as we piled out the door.

I jumped into the right-side seat of our rescue truck. As Hurst fired up the engine, I flipped on emergency lights and the electronic siren and cupped the mike to my mouth to tell the dispatcher we were en route.

We roared out the open garage doors and into traffic. Howard flew across the North Main overpass and made a hard left turn onto the Interstate 45 frontage road.

I glanced at the call slip, noticed the address and winced at our destination. It was a low-income area on Houston's near north side, close to Cavalcade and Jensen Drive. Brickbats and obscenities had been thrown at us recently in such neighborhoods. It was an unsettled period throughout much of the country, and Houston had felt the effect.

Standard procedure on calls such as this one was to notify Houston police or the Harris County Sheriff's Department and request they meet us. This time we weren't waiting for them to arrive ahead of us, and that made me edgy.

Howard drove fast eastbound along Cavalcade until our street loomed, and he slowed and turned right. About a block and a half away I saw a crowd gathered at the curb.

I killed the wailing siren and notified the dispatcher we had arrived.

We stopped in front of a dilapidated apartment house. Scanning the crowd, I saw only women, children and a few older men. No rock-throwing teenagers or angry young adults were around.

"You get inside and start mouth-to-mouth while I grab the resuscitator," Howard said.

I jumped from the truck and sprinted for the building. The screen door hung in tatters, held in place only by its bottom hinge. An elderly lady held it open for me, and I darted inside.

Immediately, everything went dim. Blinds and curtains were drawn and I halted, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. The only sound I heard was someone crying.

"She's on the sofa," the elderly woman said behind me.

When I could see reasonably well, I walked across the room and paused in front of a frayed couch. A small human form in a worn, patched dress lay at one end.

I knelt and examined the patient. I saw she was beyond help. I pressed two fingers against the carotid artery in her neck, checking for any sign of a pulse. There was none. I flashed my penlight in her eyes, but the pupils were distended and frozen.

Death wasn't a new experience; I had seen it many times in its worst forms. I learned to cope by adopting an indifferent attitude toward it. This time, though, I could barely keep my composure.

I was repelled by the horrific physical condition of the corpse on the couch.

The body was that of a small girl about 5 years old. She had been dead for several hours, with some stiffening already setting in. Her head was twisted to one side, eyes open, but they were clouded in that frosty, crystalline slit that only death brings.

Her hands were clenched together, fingers tightly entwined. Her legs were drawn up, knees touching, feet turned in at the ankles. Her body was rigid and cool to the touch.

It was the way she died that so unnerved me.

By all appearances, the little girl had starved to death. Her stomach, distended by malnutrition, was bloated like a balloon. Her incredibly thin frame could not have weighed more than 20 pounds. She was little more than skin and bones. Her eyes protruded from sunken cheeks, and her legs were tiny broom sticks.

Most ghastly of all, she was covered with sores.

I reeled backward, my mind filled with terrible Life magazine images of dying Biafran children. I wanted to cry out, but I could only stand and stare.

The front door banged open and Howard was beside me, resuscitator in tow. "D.O.A.?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question because the answer was obvious.

"Yeah, probably several hours," I responded. "We ought to get the M.E. out here." I needed something to do, just to get away from the scene.

"Give 'em a call, and I'll start the resuscitator," Howard said. That was Emergency Corps policy. Until death was officially confirmed, we kept working. Many times that was purely for the family's benefit, but it was a good rule.

I asked the gray-haired woman, who had opened the door for me, where the phone was. She pointed down a murky hallway, then identified herself as the child's grandmother.

In a quivering voice she asked, "It's too late, isn't it?"

I nodded, turned and walked to the phone, and dialed our dispatcher. I told her to notify the Medical Examiner's office that we had a D.O.A., gave a few details and hung up.

The living room was jammed with onlookers, so I cleared out everyone except me, Howard and the mother. She sat in a rickety rocking chair by the window, swaying back and forth and sobbing into cupped hands.

I stared at the child's body, trying to comprehend her dreadful condition. Nausea welled up in my throat, and I moved away.

The police arrived, and I went outside to meet them. Two edgy young white cops, clipboards in hand, walked up on the sidewalk. I described the situation, and said we had already requested the M.E. One cop went inside, but I stayed put with the other in the fresh air and sunshine.

I felt like an escapee from a charnel house.

The grandmother, hesitant and apologetic, approached me and began to talk. As her story unfolded, I found it almost impossible to absorb details of a tragedy so far-reaching that its scope extended way beyond the child's death.

She told me about her people, family and neighbors, who were so poor there was no safety net even to fall through.

The child had suffered from bronchial asthma. Severe coughing spells caused her to vomit up anything she ate. As the spells came more frequently, the girl grew thinner and weaker.

Early that morning, the mother and grandmother took the child to the emergency room of a local hospital, which refused to admit her. Following a cursory examination, the hospital gave the family some medication and sent them away because they had no insurance and no money. They were told to go to Ben Taub Hospital, which accepted charity cases.

I asked why they didn't go.

The grandmother stared at me, eyes searching. They didn't, she said, because they had no way to get there. A friend with a car took them to the first hospital, and someone else later brought them home. But they could find nobody to haul them to Ben Taub, miles across town.

There was no money for a taxi. Their last chance, the bus line, was too far away to reach with a sick child in their arms.

They were, literally, stranded.

They put the baby on the couch, gave her what medicine they had, and hoped for the best.

I was angry at their ignorance. I wanted to know why they waited so long to call us. We could have gotten the child to Ben Taub, I snapped. We could have saved her life, and we did not charge for our services.

The more agitated I got, the more stricken-faced the grandmother became. Finally, tears crept into the corners of her eyes and streaked down her wrinkled face. Her response to my hostile questioning was devastating.

She had no idea who we were or how we came to be there. We simply showed up. Nobody in the house knew how, or who, to call for help. Not us, not an ambulance, not anybody. When they realized the child wasn't breathing, the grandmother did the only thing she could think of. She dialed the operator and pleaded for assistance.

The operator contacted the sheriff's department, which called our dispatcher. By the time Howard and I got the call, it was too late.

I was staggered. Here were people living in the heart of a great city, yet so far out of the mainstream they were incapable of making a call for help. What we took for granted in our world did not exist in theirs. You can't get an answer if you don't know how to ask the question.

They had brought their child home. And there she died, in ignorance, in poverty.

Above the old lady's silver head, rows of gleaming skyscrapers in downtown Houston shimmered in the golden light of a gorgeous spring afternoon.

The distance was only a couple of miles.

It might as well have been to the moon.

I thought about the magic life that was so close to these people, yet so far out of reach. I thought about the three brave men who, this very day, had returned to Earth as heroes. What was it the announcer said? A billion dollars to send them off, and another half-billion to rescue them. Such numbers are incomprehensible.

For 10 dollars more, the cost of cab fare, another life might have been saved.

Howard tapped me on the shoulder and asked what I was thinking about.

"Nothing," I said. I turned away. It was the first time I had cried since I was a boy.

A lot has changed since that day. Houston's welfare system was dramatically improved; neighborhood clinics went up in areas where people who needed help the most could get it; the Houston Fire Department took over emergency medical and ambulance services, and a 911 emergency call system was finally established.

In today's world, I like to think the little girl wouldn't die. In her world so many years ago, I was a helpless bystander.

I got drunk that night.

Unable to sleep, I paced the driveway and sidewalk in front of my house. I saw the moon hanging in the sky, and it was then I gave the little girl a gift and made her a promise.

To you, child, I said, I give you the moon, as a token of your short life on Earth. And I promise that every year on this date, for as long as I live, I will remember you.

I never knew the name of the little girl, but I've never forgotten my promise.

Not once, in 32 years.

J.T. Chapin is a freelance writer in Helotes and a graduate of Reagan High School in Houston. Rolf Laub's graphic designs and illustrations for classical music are on view at Rice University Fondren Library through April 27. A special viewing of the exhibition will be held 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday followed by a talk and reception.